Abstract

Julian Barnes (1946-) is one of the important British novelists. In October 2011, his work The sense of an ending won the Booker Prize, an important literary prize in today's Britain and around the world. The novel, consistent with the theme of Julian Barnes's previous novels, though in short length, is concerned with history, life and death, time and memory as well as philosophy with concise language. Thanks to his distinctive writing style, an ordinary memoir turns into an extraordinary novel so that it attracts thousands of readers. Julian Barnes has his own distinct insights into history, which is particularly striking. As Justin Cartwright points out in The Observer. “The sense of an ending is a short novel, but one that packs in a lot. Full of insight and intelligence, it is in some ways a more intellectual version of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, touching on the same themes of youthful sex, inhibition, class, regret and false recollection.” This paper will reinterpret the novel from the perspective of Tony Webster. It is not difficult to find that in Tony’s memories of the past, his self-awareness exhibits different characteristics at different stages. In high school he is not interested in life and jealous of his friend Adrian. In his university, unlike other boys, he just can not easily attract girls. His girlfriend Veronica breaks up with him and becomes Adrian’s girlfriend, which gives him a sense of inferiority. Later, he suffers from divorce and lived a mediocre life. He used to regard himself as a victim emotionally, but finally when he discovers the truth of Adrian’s suicide, he finds out that he is actually a victimizer. Dramatic changes of self-knowledge arouses a great deal of remorse and guilty in his heart. In conclusion, Tony experiences a series of changes of self-knowledge since high school, and the most dramatic one is from a victim to a victimizer.

Keywords: Julian Barnes; The sense of an ending; Tony; self-knowledge

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

Introduction-1

A brief introduction to The sense of an ending-1

Literature review-1

An outline of the paper-2

Chapter 1. A pessimistic and jealous person in high school-4

1.1 Pessimistic attitudes towards life-4

1.2 Jealous of intelligent Adrian-4

Chapter 2. An underdog and a victim in university-5

2.1 An underdog in the relationship with Veronica-5

2.2 A pitiful victim suffering from emotional betrayal-6

Chapter 3. An average person pursuing a peaceable life-8

Chapter 4. A victimizer and a selfish person-9

Conclusion-11

References-12